Nokia's future: triangular smellophones?

When you commission students from a school whose home page features a bunch of folks jumping with buckets on their heads to help design the cellphone of the future, you should expect to get some curious results. That's exactly what Nokia did, asking students at London's Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design to submit concepts for 4G and 5G (5G? sign us up!) devices. Pictured is the "Scentsory," a foldable, uh -- what would you call this form factor? -- triangle phone with the added bonus of scent reception from the caller. The keypad doesn't seem particularly usable, and frankly the giant logo is a little self-indulgent, but those are the least of your problems when your buddy who works down at the rendering plant decides to catch up with you.

[Via textually.org]

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 16th 2006 6:14AM]

Not in your lifetime pal.

Its early and you are already making it a slow news day.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 16th 2006 7:22AM]

Almost the same concept with the Nokia 888, but this one is triangle, hard to get a grip on it while dialing.

[Mikey P Posted Jun 16th 2006 8:17AM]

Apparently the phones of the future are too hip for ear/mouth pieces?

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 16th 2006 10:29AM]

This is why industrial designers should not be allowed to design product until they have had at least a modicum of experience trying to sell products first.

Hmmm...do I want a phone designed by some kids in art school who are still angry at their parents and experimenting with new fashions in clothing, or a phone designed by someone who had fat fingers, poor hearing, wears glasses and has to drive a lot for a job?

And by the way Nokia..it's a PHONE, not a "User Experience" or a "multimedia computing device", or whatever. KISS, or KISS your business goodbye. Duh.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 16th 2006 12:34PM]

...what is to smell??? the breath of the person calling? or maybe the british are catering to the french and adding a little cologne body spray to keep stench down to a minimum. either way, if an interface isn't easy to use in difficult situations (driving, walking, one handed), then it won't catch on. hit and miss, but an A+ for creativity, just apply it differently please.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 17th 2006 9:34AM]

"This is why industrial designers should not be allowed to design product until they have had at least a modicum of experience trying to sell products first."

so i guess what you're saying is that we should get jobs working at the mall, pushing 2 year cell phone contracts, before we even start designing cell phones?

dude, chill out. this is a STUDENT competition for designing a 5G phone [read: way in the future], and the winner of the competition gets an internship. this isn't the "hi, we're Nokia. why don't you students design our 2007 phone line?"-contest. and from my experience, when a company has a student competition like this, if you designed a device like "someone who had fat fingers, poor hearing, wears glasses and has to drive a lot for a job", i can tell you that they would pretty much disregard your design. why? because they don't want to see designs that they could make and sell by the end of the week. they want to see new ways of thinking, and ideas that are beyond what's currently available,

"And by the way Nokia..it's a PHONE, not a "User Experience" or a "multimedia computing device""

alright, so i'm guessing the phone you're currently using has no other function than making calls, huh? because creating a good user experience with the interface, or having multimedia access...those are just outrageous ideas, and stuff like that would never catch on in the mobile phone world, present and future, right?

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 20th 2007 1:58PM]

THis is really a awesome mobile.. Just wondering where the technology is .. defenately a generation ahead cell.